In Los Angeles, a Design Pop-Up Gets Philosophical

Featured at "If You Lived Here You'd Be Home By Now," a pop-up opening tomorrow at Tenoversix in Los Angeles, are (clockwise from top left): Marina Dragomirova interchangeable goblets; photograph by Anna Liisa Liiver; Lana for Photoliu chair; artwork by Aline Cautis; Francis Bitonti vessels.Credit Courtesy Bread Studio

If every good grad-school conversation eventually comes around to the universal question of human existence — what’s the point? — then a theory-driven design pop-up opening tomorrow at the West Hollywood boutique Tenoversix offers the beginnings of an answer: that we’re all asking together. “My practice explores the interconnectivity of people, places, objects and events through the virtual and the subconscious,” says the design consultant Michelle Lane of Bread Studio, who went from a career as a fashion stylist to studying at the European Graduate School in Switzerland. “It’s nice to have objects that connect us to a shared materiality.”

Inspired by a canon of thinkers — Lane says in seriousness that her interest in design came from “an interest in Dasein” — the show, “If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now,” features pieces that combine classical beauty with new modes of production. “If art asks questions, then design presents solutions,” she says. “And in this day and age, I think solutions are very exciting.” Fractal-inspired textiles by the Danish designer Stine Linnemann and photographs of rapidly changing former Soviet countries by the photographer Anna Liisa Liiver, suffused with nostalgia, show how technology can combine with wonder at “the immortality of the ancient world,” as Lane explains.

In fine philosophical tradition, the show tackles not only the concept of time, but of space, too. With interchangeable magnetized stems, delicate goblets by the designer Marina Dragomirova, whom Lane met in Sofia, Bulgaria, last year, nod to the philosopher Jane Bennett’s influential work on “vibrant matter” and the agency of things. (Dragomirova was also included a Lane-curated show of Bulgarian design at Maryam Nassir Zadeh in New York last year.) “I guess what connects objects that transcend geography and culture would be a shared humanity or affinity towards a particular kind of experience or consciousness,” Lane says. “I see particular potential for a new kind of flexibility and dialogue within design that explores the manifestation of interior worlds.”